1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus provided with communication means for notifying maintenance information on an image forming apparatus to a management server, and a notification method therefor, as well as a program for implementing the notification method, and a storage medium storing the program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been proposed an image forming system including a plurality of image forming apparatuses, and a service center that performs centralized control of errors and the like of the image forming apparatuses (see e.g. Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. H11-119607).
In the image forming system, an image forming apparatus itself or a communication apparatus connected to the image forming apparatus detects the status of the image forming apparatus, and sends information on trouble or the like of the image forming apparatus to the service center.
However, the conventional image forming system only notifies the detected status of an image forming apparatus to the service center in predetermined timing, but is not prepared for the case where the information cannot be notified due to occurrence of trouble in the service center or in a communication path.
In particular, after recovery of a server of the service center from trouble, messages from the image forming apparatuses managed by the service center arrive at the server concentratedly or simultaneously, and the server cannot always completely perform the reception processing.
To solve this problem, a method can be envisaged which uses a high-performance server which is capable of coping with concentrated or simultaneous arrival of messages from the managed image forming apparatuses. However, this method cannot be practically used because the server is very expensive.